Product Description

A sprawling epic of family faith power and oil THERE WILL BE BLOOD is set on the incendiary frontier of California s turn-of-the-century petroleum boom. The story chronicles the life and times of one Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) who transforms himself from a down-and-out silver miner raising a son on his own into a self-made oil tycoon. When Plainview gets a mysterious tip-off that there s a little town out West where an ocean of oil is oozing out of the ground he heads with his son H.W. (Dillon Freasier) to take their chances in dust-worn Little Boston. In this hardscrabble town where the main excitement centers around the holy roller church of charismatic preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) Plainview and H.W. make their lucky strike. But even as the well raises all of their fortunes nothing will remain the same as conflicts escalate and every human value love hope community belief ambition and even the bond between father and son is imperiled by corruption deception and the flow of oil.System Requirements:Running Time: 158 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/HISTORICAL EPIC Rating: R UPC: 097361325743 Manufacturer No: 132574

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #830 in DVD
• Brand: PARAMOUNT PICTURES
• Released on: 2008-04-08
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Widescreen, Color, Dolby, Dubbed
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: 1.25 pounds
• Running time: 158 minutes

Amazon.com
Unmistakably a shot at greatness, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood succeeds in wild, explosive ways. The film digs into nothing less than the sources of peculiarly American kinds of ambition, corruption, and industry--and makes exhilarating cinema from it all. Although inspired by Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil!, Anderson has crafted his own take on the material, focusing on a black-eyed, self-made oilman named Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), whose voracious appetite for oil turns him into a California tycoon in the early years of the 20th century. The early reels are a mesmerizing look at the getting of oil from the ground, an intensely physical process that later broadens into Plainview's equally indomitable urge to control land and power. Curious, diverting episodes accumulate during Plainview's rise: a mighty derrick fire (a bravura opportunity that Anderson, with the aid of cinematographer Robert Elswit, does not fail to meet), a visit from a long-lost brother (Kevin J. O'Connor), the ongoing involvement of Plainview's poker-faced adoptive son (Dillon Freasier). As the film progresses, it gravitates toward Plainview's rivalry with the local representative of God, a preacher named Eli Sunday (brimstone-spitting Paul Dano); religion and capitalism are thus presented not so much as opposing forces but as two sides of the same coin. And the worm in the apple here is less man's greed than his vanity. Anderson's offbeat take on all this--exemplified by the astonishing musical score by Jonny Greenwood--occasionally threatens to break the film apart, but even when it founders, it excites. As for Daniel Day-Lewis, his performance is Olivier-like in its grand scope and its attention to details of behavior; Plainview speaks in the rum-rich voice of John Huston, and squints with the wariness of Walter Huston. It's a fearsome performance, and the engine behind the film's relentless power. --Robert Horton

On the DVD
This two-disc Special Collector's Edition presents Paul Thomas Anderson's dazzling film on one disc (no commentary tracks), and about an hour's worth of extras on the other. One six-minute deleted sequence will be fascinating for TWBB fanatics, as it makes explicit a few things that are otherwise implicit in the film (perhaps that's why Anderson cut it); it involves the oil crew "fishing" for a lost drill, and Daniel Plainview (Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis) talking about Eli. Another brief deleted scene revolves around a haircut. A collection of vintage photographs and other kinds of research makes up 15 minutes worth of montage, and a section titled "Dailies Gone Wild" is an outtake from the late scene of Plainview and his adopted son in a restaurant with the oil men. Filling out the disc is a 26-minute silent picture, The Story of Petroleum, produced by the Department of the Interior in the 1920s. It's an unintentionally evocative film about the business of oil, made even more evocative by the use of Jonny Greenwood's spellbinding music. It has some amazing images (a sugar cube soaking up coffee, and man running alongside a pipeline), and you can imagine Anderson drawing inspiration from it. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

The bottomless pit of greed
What is director Paul Thomas Anderson saying with this film? "There Will Be Blood" has been likened to "Citizen Kane" often enough that I initially wondered if the parodying of publishing magnate, Wm Randolph Hearst, in Kane had been revisited here in the form of TWBB's main character, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis), as an oil tycoon. Already fierecely debated in this forum, I can only add that what I took away from this film are no more than (a) the battle to death of two men--a misanthrope obsessed with oil who clings to the maxim "trust no one," and an equally ambitious and crafty bogus preacher, and (b) the corrosive effects and systemic rot of extreme ambition above all else, both in capitalistic and evangelical pursuits.

(The story has been synopsized many times already so I'll just limit my post to my opinions of the film.)

(1) Actors - Great performances by Daniel Day Lewis as lead and Paul Dano as Eli Sunday. Lewis' portrayal of the megalomaniacal Plainview is outstanding--the avarice, the obsession, the greed all come across with ferociousness. Dano is not to be upstaged as he portrays the histrionics of a bible-thumper, at times lucidly cunning and other times insanely possessed of the same evils he purports to banish. The best scenes in this film are those with both as they systemically humiliate each other at turns.

(2) Screenplay - Its story is mistakenly attributed to Upton Sinclair's "Oil!." TWBB was only inspired by it. At first depicting the entrepreneurial spirit and guts of the early 1900s, it then focuses its lenses on the price that is inevitably paid along the way to a success that's measured in money and power. Plainview wants to build an oil empire; Sunday wants to build an evangelical empire. Someone has to pay for all this empire-building. Both destroy each other and themselves in the end.

Of particular note is the screenwriter's (Anderson) ability to tell an incredible story within a believable context. Plainview and Sunday are both bigger than life (they're meant to be), but at no time did I find it a stretch to believe that such characters would behave in the manner that they do.

Much has been made of the ending when Plainview uses the analogy of a milkshake in taunting his foe, Sunday, with the fact that he already owns the underground riches (oil drainage, he says) of a tract Sunday is proposing to broker on Plainview's behalf, with monetary compensation of course: "I drink your milkshake. I drink your water. Everyday I drink the blood of the Lamb..." Many thought it ridiculous and it has actually turned into a joke associated with the film. Fact is, Anderson got the idea from a 1924 congressional hearing transcript (from the Teapot Dome Scandal, the contextual basis of Upton Sinclair's novel) where a senator describes oil drainage as: "Sir, if you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake and my straw reaches across the room, I'll end up drinking your milkshake." It's meant simply to illustrate that Plainview's finger is in every oil pot and he knows it, and Sunday's religious fervor has, and always has been, useless in impeding Plainview.

(3) Editing - Regarded as an epic by some (drivel by others), the film is over 2 hours in length. Its length does not bother me. Insatiable ambition, greed, oil, faith, industry, murder, revenge, fraud--many themes incorporated into one big picture so, if it takes 2 ½ hours to effectively depict them, then that's what it takes. In reviewing the scenes while fresh in my mind, I cannot think of any one scene that should have been cut. Every single one, I believe, contributed to the understanding of the story and its main characters.

(4) Cinematography - The spectacle of oil rigs, derricks, gas explosions and such were unexpected. (I mean, really, how exciting can an oil rig be?). Shots of gushers, rigs aflame, mud, dirt, etc. were so artistically done that one can almost feel the slickness of the oil and the acrid smell as it burns, and heighten the dangers that surround such enterprises. Wide panoramic shots of the rugged, dry land of Southern California were dazzling, its landscape broken by silhouettes of derricks and oil rigs, and once in a great while, swaths of brilliant blue water amidst the greys and black. If there is an inconographic representation of California's oil boom, I'd have to say it would be this sort of shot. Close-ups of the actors, filthy most times, unkempt, faces and limbs bronzed by outdoor labor, added to the realism. Dirty fingernails, sweat pouring from their bodies, drenched in the oil that would make them rich, dust and mud beneath their feet--all were astoundingly photographed, down to the grease that rings their collars. Technically, it's inarguably a superior film.

It's a rough, rugged, hardscabble world here with characters that cannot or will not exorcise the malignancy that has taken root in themseleves. It's a bold and visceral film that's well worth the lengthy view.

Great acting, disappointing movie.
Daniel Day-Lewis is a great actor and he turns in his usual powerful performance. Unfortunately, I wish he'd chosen a better vehicle for his talents. I very much enjoyed the detailed re-creation of a bygone era, but perhaps because it was based on a shallow novel of socialist agitprop, the story did nothing for me. There are no really major obstacles for the protagonist to overcome, just minor challenges. Why was Plainview such a heartless misanthrope? We have no idea. Why was the preacher boy such a raving lunatic? Beats me. Unfortunately, all this movie gives us are exaggerated stock characters from a socialist morality play.

Weird, unsettling and magnificent!
This is, hands down, without a doubt, one of the strangest damn movies I have ever seen. Unsettling and weird and wonderful and fantastic.

The plot is simple: a man, Daniel Plainview, steamrollers over everyone and everything in his path in order to get oil, and thereby, money and power. There's a great many comparisons that can be made between this character and Charles Foster Kane (and if you haven't seen Citizen Kane (Two-Disc Special Edition), do so), the primary difference being that Kane at least was somewhat likable. The best you can say for Plainview is that he is, at times, pitiable.

Mostly the movie is a character study, pitting Plainview against a young preacher, Eli Sunday. His church is called The Church of the Third Revelation, which if you're a smart-a$$ like me tells you everything you need to know about who he is and what he does. Suffice to say that in modern times he'd have big hair, a bad suit and the ability to cry/plead for money on cue whenever a TV camera is on him.

It's very hard to describe this movie beyond what I've said, at least as far as the plot goes. The cinematography is mind-blowing and the music is... well, effective. There's a weird sound that plays over the soundtrack from time to time. It sounds rather like an air-raide siren if you only played out the first note of it and then didn't stop.

It is one of the most memorable and effective films I've ever seen. It's very hard to watch at times, but entirely worth it, if for no other reason than Daniel Day-Lewis' performance.

One last note: whomever thought this was a good idea for DVD packaging needs to be smacked, cause it totally isn't. Green, yes, but very stupid. Some sort of plastic to at least hold the discs in place would've been nice, but, oh, well.